


Divine Devenir.

by neocortex hunters (doubleinfinity)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Will, Boys In Love, Character Study, Conversations, Established Relationship, Field Trip, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Hunting in a field, Lying in a field, M/M, Murder, Neck Kissing, Philosophy, Psychopaths In Love, Top Hannibal, Will is a Cannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 10:45:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8841565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/neocortex%20hunters





	

The two lounge between corn-colored blades of grass, nearly half as tall as marshes, untended in the field. They are hidden behind nature as a golden-furred hunter would be, but lie with their bellies exposed to the sky instead of crouching low and waiting to pounce, lazy in intent and flippant in mood, though Hannibal always carries a knife at his side.

Through half-lidded eyes, Will makes a note of the way Hannibal reclines with his back to the ground, his elbows bent to allow his arms to stretch about his head, his reach just barely far enough from the weapon to convey a meaningful flush of sick pride through Will. Hannibal will always be faster, but the gesture outweighs that general truth.

“Do you ever think of yourself as being an extension of nature?” Will asks as he shifts, digging into the earth with his shoulder blades. His eyes are fully shut when Hannibal looks his way, but the action seems a deliberate squeeze of muscle instead of a relaxed fastening. Will is not asking from a place deep in his mind, then. He’s fully present in this world, though feigning some excuse for blindness.

He listens to the grass swish quietly as Hannibal’s head turns. “When I can, I think of myself an annex of something that has no parts,” he discloses thoughtfully, his voice soft but close, thus amplified. “I’m sure that everything within our ability to perceive comes from the same slab of clay, distinctly formed from a set amount of materials. We act on borrowed nature.”

“You’ve broken that rule,” Will sighs out, rubbing his fingertips over his eyelids. “The balance of your mass does not equate to the piece that was torn from the slab to create you.”

His eyes open when he hears Hannibal press his elbow firmly into the dirt so that he may prop his head up, clearly engaged. His other hand comes to hover over Will’s face, barely tracing the lines of his eyes and the bridge of his nose with a ghostly touch bereft of pressure. “Mm,” he murmurs, “I think that’s wrong, Will. I was dug from the bottom of the pot, made from the rare chemicals that sunk below. Anything I do does not cross the bounds of what was already within me.”

“Then how can you claim you changed me?” Will’s eyes are intense yet non-intrusive, hungrier for the satiation of curiosity than he is for learning any certain truth.

The careful floating of Hannibal’s hand expires as he lets his palm fall freely on Will’s collar, shaping the male’s chest against his flattened fingers. “Fundamentally, no matter can be lost,” he answers plainly, attention to the subject faltering as he measures Will’s body beneath his clothing, “But before entropic transformation could render you new, I was hasty to construct you according to my own tastes.”

Will closes his eyes and sinks against the grass, letting himself fall limp. “You say that so bluntly.”

“It was a blunt act,” Hannibal affirms, “It does me no benefit to belittle it.” His fingers curl back and he rakes his knuckles up Will’s ribcage, sheathed bone meeting gap between more bone. He hums, thoughts idle and wandering. “I wonder at what point you do not express beauty- is it after your skin is gone, or does it linger within marrow?”

A curt laugh crawls out of Will’s throat. “My face is lovely, so too must be my spleen, then?”

“Such sarcasm does not register to a cannibal.”

“You are narcissistic.” If it’s an insult, it makes Hannibal smile.

“By the way, yes is the answer,” the older divulges with a squeeze to Will’s side, then leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “And _I_ would be lovely if I were to eat you.”

Snorting, Will gathers himself and sits up, dismissing Hannibal’s touch. “Something, something, you are who you eat.”

“Well, unfortunately, I could never be you.” Hannibal remains on his side, looking up at Will from a position of such dangerous vulnerability that it makes the boy’s heart stutter. He drags his fingers along the blades of grass pressed down by Will’s leg, playing with the space that Will has affected without actually making contact with the fabric of the younger’s jeans. “I was not fit for the chemicals with which God made you.”

Closing his eyes, Will lifts his chin to the clouds and feels the warm, auspicious breeze travel around him. “Would you love me more than you love killing?” he wonders frankly, undemanding.

Hannibal thinks, then smiles to himself. “Perhaps,” he responds softly, studying Will’s features as they tip back to awe at the vastness of the sky above, “If you could offer me a distinct difference between the two.” Will’s neck cranes to look at him, eyes opening again. “I feel you when I kill. And when I feel you, I am making a killing of us all.” He reaches up to grasp Will’s jaw in his hand, obliterating that overindulgent habit of toying. His thumb strokes roughly over Will’s decorated cheek, seeking out wound behind facial hair. “Do you feel me?”

He hears Will’s breathing shallow, muscle and bone turned supple as a girl. The younger leans back on his elbows, trying to keep his head from hitting the ground. “I’ve never had an exhilaration for violence.” Hannibal knows this already. “Gut reactions are telling, if nothing else, but they are impermanent. You are permanent.” He looks on the older, who is now sitting up beside him, grasping him by the chin. He lets his eyelids fall. “My brain is rerouted. New chemical pairs have made their escape to the periphery and suddenly, when I touch blood I am feeling your racing pulse.”

“No,” Hannibal sustains firmly, shifting in the grass until his front is rocking against Will’s side, gripping hand unfastened and fingers sketching along Will’s mouth, “Not the periphery.”

“What is-?” Will begins, edging his head back to let Hannibal between his collar, the male’s lips opening against his neck and feeding hotly from the surface of his flesh. “What is the distinction between you and me?” His breath is rapid and loud between the shelter of his words, Hannibal’s tongue on his jugular, pulling Will’s skin between his teeth. He hears his own panting from a distance, as if it doesn’t belong to him. He risks his balance to extend his right arm, crashing into the dirt with Hannibal on top of him, bringing two fingers to the cannibal’s throat. He feels the throb of a quickened artery beneath Hannibal’s jawline and _how odd_ , he thinks, for a man of composure and stoicism to be given away by this physiological treason, and what a _killing_ it makes of him.

“Operational definitions are useful linguistic tools,” Hannibal speaks to break the suction, leaning over the boy with hands and knees planted on either side of the other, then pushes his mouth onto Will’s and dips his fevered tongue down his throat. Hannibal pulls away. “But language is not real.”

He returns to Will’s mouth, pulling the male’s tongue inside his cheek and sucking. His jaw remains rigid, even when Will uses his position to flatten his two palms and glide them down the front of Hannibal’s belt, slipping beneath his clothing, below his waistline, and grabbing Hannibal’s length in two palms. “Real enough that you make a living off it,” he winces.

“Can be tools,” Hannibal answers breathlessly, “I supply tools in the form of phrases. The exposure to a precise new arrangement of words can be all it takes for the materials from which you are made to change chemically.” He groans, shifting against Will’s touch. “I’ve seen it. I’m seeing it take place below me- exothermically.”

Will crumbles to the ground and rolls his head back in the grass, consumed. “On display?” he queries in a hurried voice, “Or concealed, for you to pry open?”

With his head cocked, Hannibal wonders whether Will refers to the concept of human reactions, or himself- how he will be had.

Hannibal reveals a sharp, humorless set of teeth, which come shaped by a growl. As Will’s hands remerge, Hannibal pushes gently against the joints in Will’s knees, folding them up so that his feet are planted on the ground but his kneecaps are pointed towards the sky. “Naked, with one’s patellas to the heavens and his arms strewn freely.”

He rises to his feet so he may watch the spectacle of Will conceding, kicking the clothing from his limbs and tossing them into the coveting jowls of tall grass. He has the sturdy, broad body of any man his age, the loveliness of his face extended down to the last few inches on his toes. Hannibal studies assiduously as those toes dig into the earth and propel him back, dragging his vertebrae across the foliage so he has enough room to fold up his knees vertically, yet open them to Hannibal, tucking his hands behind his head. Hannibal betrays nothing except for the slightest drawing in of his own bottom lip. The wheaty, milk-dark coloring of Will’s skin against the yellow grass that bends around him creates a vividly enticing picture, warmth let off, warmth allowed in.

Hannibal idly goes down the buttons of his own shirt, unfastening them one by one, keeping eye contact with Will, waiting patiently from his position with his limbs stretching beckoningly every few moments. There has come a transcendence of language now, as the older lets his third button loosen and expose a slice of his chest, honey-pale and curled with hair. They speak with their held gaze, Hannibal warning him, anticipating him, and then all of a sudden, turning rigidly from him. His head snaps to the right at the sound of corn stalks crunching.

Disinterestedly, Will follows Hannibal’s gaze to the source of the sound, seeing a blur of legs between the strokes of grass. No concrete response is to be read on his face, just a brief acknowledgement bordering on boredom; however, Hannibal’s arousal has already been suppressed, decreased to make way for prowling. His shoulder blades come together as he arches his back and lowers himself behind the grass. His hand goes to the belt he was planning on unshackling himself from.

“Shh,” he soughs at the same time as Will props himself up on his elbows to ask a question. Will notices the gleam of sunlight on silver in Hannibal’s hand. The older teeters forward silently, reaching down to give Will an inattentive caress on the side of his face, then he’s quick on his feet and low to the ground, pushing into the curtain of tall grass until he’s no longer visible.

There’s silence for a few moments, then a loud rustling of vegetation. Somebody runs and another trips. He hears the unfamiliar screech of a male and then a hefty thump, Hannibal’s victim falling into the veil of corn stalks. More silence, longer this time, and Will lingers uncomfortably; then Hannibal is coming back into their small clearing, his shirt in his hands and the surface from his forehead to chest bloody.

He holds the collar and tail of his shirt in either hand, using the clothing as a shallow basin for blood, red dripping through it at a rapid rate. “More impulsive than I am satisfied with,” he apologizes, stalking closer to the other, who is right where he left him. Will doesn’t commit to any particular emotion, just watches neutrally. “However, it’s been a while since I’ve hunted and I think this one simply grabbed me, as with the lion who is not hungry but has a little one.” He pauses, focusing in on Will. “I’m afraid my cravings may have shifted a bit; I hope you don’t mind.”

Will shakes his head, (no, he doesn’t mind), the thrumming in his heart nearly loud enough to suggest he was the predator. He leans back willingly, arching his body. Hannibal comes forth and tips the shirt over Will, sending the retained blood flowing down and landing over the younger, painting his torso in thick, crimson substance. There’s something fondly dehumanizing in how Hannibal wrings the shirt over Will’s face and legs, drenching him in the residue he can’t seem to waste.

“Am I your victim?” the younger proposes aloud, swiping away a clot of blood fallen too close to his eye and smearing it down the side of his cheek. “Are you immortalizing the kill through me?”

Hannibal exposes his profile to Will, smiling ponderingly. “I am feeding my young one,” he answers, though Will is _anything_ but little, even when willingly vulnerable and metallic like this. He thinks that Will’s epidermal surface is calloused and tough, but there is a softer, fleshy interior- it’s rare to get the cut just right, because the third layer is held by more rigid skin, buffering that inner plasticity. But he’s determined its depth, and this is where he has done the most of Will’s changing. His expression is dark and inspired. “Shall I fuck you, muddied by the mess that I have allowed you to share in?”

“Show me the knife first,” Will urges, immediately lost in the resumed game of arousal between the two.

Without commenting, Hannibal’s hand flits to his belt and he pulls the wooden-hilted blade from its loop, displaying it to the other male. Its crooked edge is gleaming, everything about it suggesting haste. Hannibal truly has not killed for a while, and Will has never known him to go on definite breaks.

As Will reaches forward to run the silver through his fingers, he meets resistance. Hannibal lowers to accommodate him but does not yield the blade. “Do you abstain from killing, for me?” Will asks as the edge pricks the tip of his ring finger, wondering if Hannibal detects any difference between this droplet of his and the souse that isn’t.

The older pulls the knife away, expression hard, not unfriendly. “No,” he tells Will, “I kill often. Impersonally, however. The quick and safe kind that gets the urge out and the blood on.” He lowers to the ground again, kneeling over Will, whispering now. “I’m determined to not be unfaithful to you, not in this way. If I am to kill for exhilaration and intimacy, it will be with you.”

Will breathes out shakily; when he responds, he’s inadvertently taken on Hannibal’s low volume. “Then I’m not the victim.”

Hannibal lifts the knife against the sky, watching the sunlight dance against its reflective surface in a different pattern each time he rotates it. “Do we measure labels of identity on such a balance? If you receive two wounds but deliver three, have you tipped the scale from victim to perpetrator?”

“Am I even capable of drawing a scale?” Will quips as Hannibal plunges the weapon blade-down into the soil, regaining use of both his hands and immediately wrapping them around Will’s cranium. He stares into Will as he pulls the younger’s hand into his clutch and brings the boy’s ring finger between his lips, lapping at the few drops come from his scratch.

The grass stirs with the wind, and Will thinks about the body lying in the field somewhere close, and the fact that he has no thirst for knowing its gender, its age, were it a man on a hike or a ranger tending the land. He likes this absent feeling, of not knowing something that Hannibal has literally poured over, about it being now about _him_ instead.

Hannibal runs both his hands through Will’s hair and down his shoulders, eyes raptly fleeting so that he may constantly refresh his short-term memory of what each new inch of Will’s skin looks like. “Perhaps not with a pen of your own,” he finally answers, letting Will undo his belt and tug his pants from his waist. “But you can always borrow mine. You enjoy being complicit.” He seems to be making an accusation but his voice holds such admiration that Will thinks he could actually blush.

“You enjoy making me complicit,” he huffs while Hannibal’s hips shift against him, gathering his legs to Hannibal’s sides. “I feed you parts of myself in return for your affection.”

“As the little ones of Ugolino did, offering their flesh when he lacked sustenance.” Hannibal thrusts roughly into Will, gearing the male towards him with steadied hands on his waist. He runs a curled palm across Will’s forehand and cradles the side of his face when he hears the younger gasp. “Do you intentionally offer yourself for me to devour when it’s the killing pangs that consume me?”

Will strains his neck, pulling his head back to show Hannibal his throat as the older fucks him on the red-tinted grass, struggling for verbal competency. “No- yes, I will kill with you. It will be- be satisfying again.” As they had before, Hannibal’s lips return to Will’s neck to finish constructing their bruises, this time drinking the blood from Will’s flesh until his own color is visible there again.

Hannibal licks smoothly up the boy’s jaw, tongue settling against his ear. “If I am to be feasted on for my crimes,” he whispers, breath hot on Will’s nape, “I would like you to supply the irony, Will.”

Tilting his head, Will meets Hannibal’s face and takes him in a kiss. “I don’t have much of an appetite,” he moans between tongues, gripping Hannibal’s wrists and resting his feet atop Hannibal’s back, oscillating with Hannibal to bring the older deeper in him.

“You don’t sound convincing,” Hannibal speaks slowly, using his body to tilt Will until he’s arched degradingly into the dirt, whining and immobilized. “My little one feeds me and I feed my little one. He doesn’t admit he’s hungry until he has the first taste, but then he is starving.”

Will comes with an added hand and a decision removed, complicit in a brute pleasure that demands the renunciation of control if he is to sustain his sense of humanity. The red behind his eyelids in that moment is all his own, but it is Hannibal’s too, borrowed as thoughtlessly as a pen.

When the older releases him, elbow taken off his neck and hand away from his cock, he gazes up at Hannibal with clouded eyes and feels semen drip out of him.

“You share part of the argil you were made from with me,” Will comments softly while Hannibal caresses his hair, gently outlining the shape of Will’s face. “You share something that you will never get back. The matter may not be lost but you are aware that you cannot reclaim it once it has changed form.”

Hannibal looks upon him longingly, mouth pursed. “There is balance here,” he promises as if it has been an assumed un-truth up until now. “Between me, you and I. I want to see you gorge yourself, and I want to hold your inevitable shame. Feed me the worst parts of yourself that you cannot stand, and I will pass into your mouth what you desire. You never have to feel responsible. I will always accept a characterization of manipulation for you; it can _always_ be my fault, and you can always enjoy in knowing that.”

“Hannibal,” Will whispers.

They dress the best they can with what they have, Will pulling his green button-down over his shoulders as they walk through the tall grass back to where the car is. As he buttons it, he wonders passingly if the body is somewhere close to them now, and though his eyes dart around for any sign of it, he’s not disappointed when he doesn’t find it.


End file.
